Movie Review: Priest – You’re judgment day is not postponed…

No waiting for October for you Priest… You get ripped on NOW!!!

So this weekend some things happened: Harold Camping was expecting the Apocalypse to occur; I went to see Priest hoping to see a solid movie with  that would keep my attention and tell a new Vampire mythology that I could add to my database…

*sharpens blade* Unfortunately… Harold and I did not get what we wanted this past weekend (hehe couldn’t resist [>_>] <– these are shifty eyes by the way).

Priest is a movie based on a graphic novel that tells the story of humanity’s battle against a species of vampire beasts. The Vampire horde being ruthless in battle, ravaged the human race for centuries. Reaching a near extinction at the hands of the Vampires, the church developed a gated city and organized a group of monks and trained them in Vampire combat (… yeah i know it sounds cheesy, but it was pretty amusing). This order of monks were dubbed “The Priests” and were charged with combating the Vampire threat. Successful in their endeavours, The Priest were able to destroy almost all the vampires. The few vampires that were left were then forced into reservations. No longer having a purpose, the priest were then inserted back into civilian life.

The movie starts off great, the complicating incedent being one of the former priests’ neice is kidnapped by the Vampires and he sets out to use his unique set of skills to find her, discovering a rising vampire threat that the Church is ignoring. The thing that bothered me was that the movie fizzled the whole time without an explosion. Honestly, it didn’t take the story as far as it could have gone. Obviouslyb with the length of the graphic novel, there are meant to be sequels, and this movie assumed that because of the fact that there would be sequels we as the audience would watch the movie and be there for the second one…. sorry guys… no.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that there is a certain amount of setup that must happen in any story to allow it to progress, but when you focus too much on the setup… you miss the fact that you still have to successfully tell an interesting story. We still need to be entertained by the first part of the story to the point where it can exist by itself. If you miss that, then you give up any chance of the audience desiring to see a sequel (I’m talking to you too Chris Columbus and your attempt to create the Percy Jackson series!!! Get it together!)

I’ve always been a big fan of Paul Bettany and Carl Urban. For the most part, they did the that they could with what they were given. Bettany, however, has taken another role that has not challenged his talent. I’m hoping to see him in better roles in the future. Until that role comes along, I’ll just wait for him to reprise his voice role of Jarvis in the Avengers.

Overall, the idea behind this movie was great, but they took too long to tell the story and I quickly became uninterrested…

The Verdict: Redbox that jawn!